Carbon Cycle Data Assimilation Group (CCDAS)

Mission statement

The Carbon Cycle Data Assimilation Group (CCDAS) is a cross-departmental research group between the Departments of Biogeochemical Systems and Biogeochemical Integration. Its major goals are

1. to integrate complementary, globally relevant carbon-cycle observations into a consistent process-based modelling framework,
2. to reduce the gap between observational understanding of the carbon cycle and Earth system modelling, and
3. to reduce and quantify uncertainties in coupled carbon-cycle climate projections.

To accomplish this goal, the group develops a framework for inverse modelling of the recent terrestrial biosphere dynamics (notably the carbon cycle) at different temporal and spatial scales. The work consists of assimilating local and global scale carbon cycle observations and derived data products (such as remote sensing data) to constrain the terrestrial component of the MPI Earth system model (JSBACH). The Jena Scheme for Biosphere Atmosphere Coupling in Hamburg is jointly developed by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry. The model operates at a half-hourly time-step and simulates carbon dynamics and biogeophysical interactions with the climate system. Together with FastOpt, CCDAS is developing a data assimilation system for JSBACH based on the adjoint version of the code.

The group uses the High Performance Cluster at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and super computer of the German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ) called blizzard for their simulations.

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